Exploring Mediating Factors between Agricultural Training and Farmers’ Adoption of Drip Fertigation System: Evidence from Banana Farmers in China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

It is a very interesting and appropriate work to analyse the mediating effect of factors such as absorptive capacity, social interaction, or active learning in the relationship between agricultural training and the effectiveness for farmers in adopting innovative agricultural technologies (as drip fertigation system, DFS). The analysis is very topical regarding agricultural training as an effective way for increasing productivity by means of sustainable techniques and the paper is very welcome.

 

Nevertheless, I suggest some recommendations:

Page 2 – Lines 72-73

As referenced in the work, “The number of cumulative adopters can be described by an S-shaped curve as the technology spreads over several stages (Rogers, 1962)”. This assertion could be ratified with some recent publication (or data).

 

Page 3 – Line 121

Minor English changes required: “It is followed by describes the data and conducts a preliminary analysis of the data”

 

Page 11 – Line 411 (as well as Tables 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9)

- In my opinion, nowadays, researchers must not consider results significance of variables at 10% as statistically significant variables. Only 1% and 5% must be considered. But if authors consider this significance appropriate, it is OK for me.

 

Page 12 – Line 442 (as well as Tables 6, 7 and 9)

- We can see in Table 6 that constant terms are very high and statistically significant at 1%. This result implies that there are other important factors that affect this model and authors should have considered. I feel that the fact of including other variables in the model at this stage is a difficult task, but please: Could authors include a list of factors not included in the model, but with a probable impact on the model? This could be considered in the discussion as a limitation of the research, and authors could obtain this list of additional factors from bibliography, for instance.

 

General amendments:

- Conclusions need to include the possibility to extrapolate the paper methodology and findings to other regions in the world. Is there any limitation to the application of this methodology? I feel that these papers could help to improve this work considering the link between irrigation management and sustainable development in other contexts:

- Efficient irrigation management can contribute to reduce soil CO2 emissions in agriculture (DOI: 10.1016/j.geoderma.2015.09.003)

- Greenhouse gas emissions and soil organic matter dynamics in woody crop orchards with different irrigation regimes (DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.06.398)

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

In the manuscript the authors presented an important point, although the manuscript has some drawbacks.

Main remarks:

1. Intruduction - what is the research gap?

2. Literature review - the literature review should write more about the agriculture, farms development. Suggested publications:

• Roman, M.; Roman, M.; Prus, P.; Szczepanek, M. Tourism Competitiveness of Rural Areas: Evidence from a Region in Poland. Agriculture 2020, 10, 569. https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture10110569

• Ngo, H.Q.T.; Huynh, V.N.S.; Nguyen, T.P.; Nguyen, H. Sustainable Agriculture: Stable Robust Control in Presence of Uncertainties for Multi-Functional Indoor Transportation of Farm Products. Agriculture 2020, 10, 523. https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture10110523

3. Methods - in my opinion, the manuscript lacks more statistical and taxonomic methods.

4. Results - table 7 should be corrected, editorial.

5. Conclusions - in your conclusions, please also answer the following questions:

• what are the directions for the future?
  • what are the research gaps?
  • what is new to this manuscript?

Please also answer the following questions:

• are farmers willing to participate in training?
• what are the directions of farm development when the farmer participates in training?
• what should the next topic of training be? During the COVID-19 pandemic?

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Accept in present form. Good luck!